“No one invited you,” he grumbled.
“I don’t need an invitation, short stack.” Randy grinned.
“Heh, short stack,” repeated Rory.
“Shut up,” Randy snapped. He shoved past Rory and Jacko and peered into the opened hatch of the Cable Bike. “You’re dead when the Doc sees this.”
“Well, he won’t, ’cause I’m gonna put it together before he gets back.”
“Too late, buttercup. The Doc’s here.” Randy cracked his long goose neck with a quick jerk. “And he’s askin’ for you.”
“Yeah, right,” snorted Micah. “Like I’d fall for that.”
“Fine.” Randy shrugged. “I’ll tell him you’re too busy tearing apart his little girl’s birthday present to be bothered.” He spun on his heels as if he had just received marching orders.
Micah couldn’t take the chance.
“Okay, okay,” he relented. “Just gimme a sec.” He grabbed one of the parts he had removed from the motor and fit it back into place. He looked around again for his wrench.
“Did you borrow my tools, Randy?”
“Pffft. I don’t touch your stupid crap.”
“Why can’t I find anything, then?”
“I dunno—’cause you’re a retarded pygmy?”
Jacko and Rory chuckled. Micah sifted through the junk pile. Nothing. Must have packed everything away in his tool chest and forgotten about it. He whipped the lid open.
Twang. SPLAT!
A blast of white paint exploded into Micah’s face.
The work shed rang with screams of laughter. Randy collapsed against the door frame while Rory and Jacko rolled on the grimy floor. Micah coughed up heaps of paint and tasted the bitter stuff trickling down his sinuses. His eyes stung as he tried to wipe them clean.
Beneath the splatters of white, his face burned red hot.
Micah stomped into the foyer of the manor, still fuming. He had tried to clean himself up, but paint still filled the folds of his ears and clung to his reddish hair. He was a total mess, but he couldn’t keep the Doc waiting.
Worried servants were gathered near the closed study door.
“Make way. Comin’ through,” Micah said, elbowing to the front. He heard voices coming from inside. One was Tennyson, but it took Micah a second to place the other—he had never heard the Doc sound angry before.
“Where is she?” roared Dr. Plumm.
“I—I went to pick her up at school,” Tennyson answered. “But sometimes she avoids me, like it’s some sort of game. She always finds her way home, sir.”
Micah nervously dug a thumbnail into his budding calluses. He cracked the door open and poked his head inside. Tennyson and Micah’s burly sow of a mom faced the Doc, who stood silhouetted before the fireplace. Micah wondered why he had a fire going on such a hot day.
“Take an Auto. Find her,” Dr. Plumm commanded.
“But sir, how am I supposed to—”
“I don’t care how. Just go find her!”
As Tennyson took his leave, they spotted Micah lingering in the doorway.
“What in the burning hells?” his ma shrieked as she rushed up and snatched his forearm with one meaty hand. She yanked him so hard he thought his shoulder might pop out of its socket, and then scoured his paint-smeared face with her apron as if he were a dirty dish.
“Just look at yourself. And how dare you make Dr. Plumm wait around for your sorry carcass!”
She drew back her hand. Micah pinched his eyes, bracing for the impact.
“Deirdre!” the Doc interrupted. “I need you to pack a suitcase for Phoebe. Enough for a week.”
She paused. “Of course, Dr. Plumm. Anything else?”
“Leave Micah with me.”
With a huff of indignation, Micah ripped his arm free from her grasp and rubbed his shoulder. She fixed him with a threatening stare and grumbled as she departed.
Dr. Plumm had always been a lean man, but now he was a scarecrow. His long, sharp face was sunken and his glasses framed desperate eyes. It was as if he had aged a decade since Micah had last seen him.
“Do you know where she is?” Dr. Plumm asked, his voice hoarse and weary.
“You mean Phoebe? No, sir, I don’t.”
“Please.” The Doc bent down to look Micah dead in the eye. “Think. How else would she get home from school?”
“Prob’ly Zip Trolley.”
“Then go with Tennyson. Check all the stops.” He crossed to his desk and snatched up a stack of documents.
“’Scuse me, sir. But I’d be faster on foot.”
Dr. Plumm tossed the papers into the fireplace and turned back to Micah.
“There’s only one stop nearby,” Micah explained, “and I got the perfect shortcut to the park. Plus, Tennyson drives like a granny, sir.”
“Go,” the Doc said. Micah whipped his hand up in a military salute, then bolted through the door and down the hall.
A legitimate excuse to leave Plumm Estate was not to be taken lightly. And it was all the more important since it was a chance to help the Doc out.
Micah burst onto the front porch, and the humid dusk wrapped around him like a blanket. He raced down the steps toward the Baronet, which was just pulling out of the driveway. Micah dove onto the hood and slid across it in a jumble. Tennyson screeched the Auto to a stop and rolled down the window to scream at him, but Micah was already halfway across the lawn. He bounded over the hedges, ducked into a somersault, and drew his modified Snakebite in one motion.
Almost perfect. He had been practicing that move.
As Micah hurried out the front gates, the manor glowed to life. Light danced across the hexagonal towers topped with bronze turtle-shell domes, and it blasted out through tall triangular windows to reflect on shining metal walls. There wasn’t another place quite like it. Micah remembered the first time he saw Plumm Estate as if it were yesterday.
Three years before, the Tanners had come to Albright City from Oleander, a farming town in the Mid-Meridian state of Sodowa. When their father up and ditched them, Ma had been forced to support the family. Barefoot and broke, they hit the road in their beat-up old Auto and trekked to Albright City—he, Ma, Randy, and Margie.
It was right around then that Mrs. Plumm kicked the bucket.
None of the servants knew what had happened to her, or if they did, they weren’t allowed to talk about it. And whenever Micah asked, he got his ears boxed. Whatever it was, it must have been bad.
But it was a good thing for the Tanners, ’cause the Doc was in sore need of help. Ma answered his ad, and the next day they were pulling up at Plumm Estate. Holy moly, were their jaws on the floor! At the time, Micah thought this place was the best. He didn’t realize that working as a servant meant always getting treated like one.
And of course he didn’t know about Li’l Miss Freaky and her stupid bag of tricks.
The Baronet pulled out of the driveway, and Micah slammed himself up against the gate to hide. He wasn’t gonna let that creep Tennyson beat him to his target.
Commence Operation Seek the Freak.
Shimmering Crest was the main boulevard that zigzagged down the steep hillside to the park at the base. That’s where the Zip Trolley stop was. Instead of taking the winding road, he was going straight down the hill, a gnarly drop that cut through all the switchbacks.
Micah thought about Maddox, hero of the absolute best Televiewer show ever. He was a hard-boiled Special Ops soldier who didn’t take crap from nobody. Right about now, the Greinadoren Kommandei would be everywhere, leagues of deadly shadows shifting in the trees. Maddox wouldn’t even sweat. He’d just smirk and say:
“No guts, no glory.” Micah growled it in his best Maddox voice and cocked his gun.
He leaped into position among the birch trees, pressing against the trunks. Nodding
a command to his imaginary strike force, he hurtled out and fired his gun wildly. One washer missed, but two hit their mark, thudding into a tree.
Direct hit. Go, go, go!
Micah dodged imaginary fire and ran deeper into the clump of birches. He slid down a steep embankment, clung to exposed roots, and scrabbled down to the road below, tumbling the last few feet awkwardly.
The enemy’s right on our tail! Watch your six!
Margie was the one who had turned him on to Maddox. His older sister was a hard act to follow with her perfect grades, a scholarship to MIM, and immediate recruitment into a special engineering corps. She was pretty much the only one who gave two spits about Micah.
He wondered where she was nowadays. They hadn’t heard from her in more than a year. Apparently, she was on some sort of top-secret mission. With all the threats of war and stuff on the news, he bet it was super important.
Micah raced across the street, crawled through the underbrush, and jumped onto the roof of a garage below. He clung to the rain gutter and shimmied to the ground.
The homes on this lane were nice, but nothing like Plumm Estate and the other mansions at the top of the hill. These houses were packed close together and made from cheaper alloys.
The sky was growing darker. He had to hurry.
They’re closing in. It’s now or never.
Micah made a break for it. He let loose a flurry of rounds as he sprinted down the block, plugging imaginary Greinder Kommies left and right.
CLANG!
He froze. One of his shots had nailed a nearby mailbox mobile. It was a pointless doodad, a few dinky brass propellers and dangling baubles. As Micah hurried over to inspect the damage, he noticed that the center pinwheel was held on by a platinum hex grommet, a size eight.
Just the kind he had been looking for.
With a quick glance around, Micah spit on his hands and used his newly developed calluses to unscrew the grommet. He crammed it in his pocket and continued on his way.
It was the Doc who had first encouraged Micah to build stuff, noticing that he had a gift for the gears. “When a worker finds a spare part, he thinks it’s the missing piece of an old machine,” Dr. Plumm once told him. “But when an inventor finds a spare part, he imagines it’s the perfect addition to something new. Which one do you want to be?”
He didn’t have to think too hard on it: neither. Being a worker was as lame as being a servant, and being an inventor sounded like doing math with a bunch of losers. No, he was destined for bigger things. And as soon as he was old enough to get into the Military Institute of Meridian next year, he’d prove it.
Micah hurdled over a steel picket fence, dashed across the yard, and scrambled down into the undergrowth, scaring a couple squirrels out of hiding. It was a sheer slope packed with thorny shrubs and thistles, but he muscled his way through it, feeling the brambles poke through his pant legs.
After a few steep drops, the heavy brush opened up to reveal the park. Gold and silver lampposts sculpted to look like metal dandelions illuminated the walking trail. The fireflies were out as well, flickering like copper pennies in the dark. A few folks hung around the silver fountain, while others jogged along the path.
None of them noticed the filthy soldier watching them from the shadows.
Hugging the outskirts of the park, he snuck from tree to tree and approached the Zip Trolley stop. He figured that Tennyson was at least five minutes behind, the way he drove. Micah huddled near some boulders so that he would have Freaky in his sights as soon as she arrived.
Unless he had already missed her. Or did she take a different route home? That would be annoying—just like her, come to think of it.
Minutes ticked past. Micah picked clumps of white paint out of his hair and waited. If he didn’t find her, at least he had managed to get a whiff of freedom. And he got the size-eight hex grommet, so it wasn’t a total loss.
He was just thinking about the long trek back up the hill when a familiar lanky shadow came loping down the trail.
Target sighted!
Seeing her again brought his anger back to a rolling boil. She had made him look like a moron in front of his brother and friends. Plus, she’d gotten paint all over his stuff. He whipped his gun out and closed in on his prey.
She looked nutty, hugging herself and throwing glances over her shoulder. Good, she was already nervous, here all alone.
Micah lunged out from his hiding place and ran at her pell-mell.
“BLAHHHH!” he screamed. Phoebe screamed louder. She got about four feet of air. Her reaction was even better than he had hoped. Micah took aim with his Snakebite and fired—click, click.
Dang! Outta ammo.
He squealed with laughter anyway, stomping and running around in little circles. She was white as a stinkin’ ghost, and her eyes were big as eggs, though they narrowed to mean little gashes when she saw who it was.
Mission accomplished.
“I hate you! I hate you!” she hissed, and punched him all over his back and arms. Her weak little blows made him laugh louder, even though her bone-sharp knuckles kinda stung.
Oh man, this was too good. Micah had never seen her so raw. Maybe he could even get her to cry. That would be a first.
“Gotcha!” Micah cackled. “That’s for the paint!”
Her nasty little mouth puckered, and she stubbornly jutted out her pointy chin. She tossed back her stringy mop of hair and marched away from Micah like a peacock on stilts.
“You little maggot,” Phoebe snapped. “Next time I’ll load it with bleach.”
“Aw, come on!” Micah said, bouncing along behind her. “Don’t be a sore loser. Hey! Wait up, Freaky!”
“That’s Miss Plumm to you, Toiletboy.”
“Pffft!” Micah scoffed. “Fine, be that way. I was gonna show you my secret shortcut back home so you could go cry to your daddy, but…”
“Oh, go unclog something, you—” She stopped abruptly. Her mouth hung open as his words registered. A firefly drifted past her face, lighting her eyes.
Then she broke into a full-tilt run up the hill.
“Hey, you can’t go back alone!” Micah shouted after her. “He’s gonna think I didn’t do my job!”
hoebe rocketed up the front steps of the manor and flung open the doors. The foyer was still and thick with shadows. Where was all the brightness and activity? Where was everybody? The hairs on her arms rose and she hugged her body tight, wishing she had something warmer to wear than just this short-sleeved blouse and loose skirt. She crept across the slices of moonlight splayed across the copper plank floor. The silence was heavy, save for the hollow heartbeat tick of the grandfather clock.
“Daddy?” Her voice cracked with uncertainty.
Phoebe’s thin oval suitcase of crosshatched aluminum sat beside the front door.
Footsteps approached from the study. She tensed. The sound grew loud, pounding across the metal floor and reverberating through the massive hall.
Her father rushed forward, arms wide.
She leaped into his embrace. Her confusion over the last few months, the terror of the stranger with the bowler hat, all dissolved so fast that they might as well have never existed. He grasped her tight, lifting her until her feet dangled off the ground. She buried her face in his collar. He smelled like a machinist—the scent of sweat, grit, and smoky iron. It was always stronger when he returned from one of his trips, though he usually tried to cover it up with lemon-lavender aftershave. He seemed to have forgotten it this time, but she could not have cared less.
Phoebe felt a swell in her throat but fought it down. She hadn’t cried in nearly three years and was not about to start. Not in front of him.
“Cricket,” her father whispered.
Normally, she hated when he called her that—it made her feel like a five-year-old. Not no
w. She savored the word.
“You’re here,” she said. “But why are you all alone? Where is everyone?”
“I sent them to their quarters. It’s just you and me.” He looked over her shoulder at Micah, who was standing in the doorway and watching the reunion with nosey insistence. “That’ll be all, son.”
She hadn’t heard Micah enter, and she didn’t bother to look. Her world started and stopped within her dad’s embrace, and not even the Tanner twerp could ruin it. The boy lingered as if he wanted to say something, but her father’s stare made it clear he had been dismissed. He wandered out the front door, scuffing his feet in that lazy way that normally drove Phoebe up the wall.
But at this moment, she couldn’t care less about Micah.
When Phoebe’s dad lowered her to the ground, she saw that he was filthy, his features now haunted and severe. But then he smiled. His tired eyes crinkled gently, the worry seemed to fade, and he was her father again.
“I—I thought you weren’t coming back this time,” Phoebe confessed.
His smile vanished, and he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“We have to go,” he insisted. “We have to get away from here. We’re leaving everything behind. Do you understand?”
Phoebe shook her head no—she did not understand.
“Of course you don’t. How could you?”
His grip tightened on her shoulder, and she looked down at it. His right hand was covered in a mottled green bruise and wrapped in a filthy bandage. Her dad pulled it away and gestured to Phoebe’s suitcase.
“I had Mrs. Tanner pack our bags. We have to go,” he said.
“But she’s not permitted to touch my things. I need to check it to see if—”
A muted rustle of bushes outside. Her father looked up sharply and put a finger to his lips. A long silence choked the room. Phoebe fidgeted.
“Now,” he said at last. “Through the sitting room. They’re probably watching the front door.”
“Who?” Phoebe whispered. “The man in black?”
“What man?”
The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge Page 4